Daredevil : Schism
by darkknight uk
Summary: An old friend arrives at the law office of Nelson & Murdock desperate for legal help.He's been charged with a shocking mass murder.The law wants him, the other side is thirsty for his blood. Can Matt Murdock clear his friend's name and uncover the truth?
1. Chapter 1

Stan Lee Presents…

A story by Dan Laurikietis

-**D  
D**-

Hello,

My name is Matthew Murdock. Feel free to call me Matt.

I am in my early thirties, an attorney by trade, single, practicing Irish Catholic, non-smoker. I live in the district of New York commonly known as Hell's Kitchen. But, I assume you know all that already.

I suppose you'd like to know what I look like?

Sorry. Can't help you there.

I haven't seen myself since I was a kid.

And what a mischievous little tyke I was. What the NYPD would refer to as a "juvie" a juvenile delinquent. I ran with a bad crowd, getting into tussles, nothing major but I was no little angel. Until one day in a rare fit of selflessness and moral fortitude I pushed an old man out of the way of an oncoming truck, the payload of which just so happened to be carrying a radioactive isotope. And the stuff hit me.

Right in the face.

Seriously.

I keep going over it again and again in my head.

That stuff should have killed me.

It didn't. Obviously.

As it was it merely robbed me of my sight. Curiously though, it gave me something infinitely more useful back in return.

My other senses function with superhuman sharpness and acuity.

I live in a world of eternal darkness, but I sense in other ways you cannot imagine. My sense of sound provides me with a kind of "radar sense" that detects sound waves, painting a picture for me as they bounce off objects. You've heard of seismic surveys right? Same principle!

Not long after my accident my father was murdered. My old man was a boxer, light heavy weight. You may have heard of him. "Battlin' Jack Murdock" could have been champ. Twice. He was brutally murdered for refusing to take a dive in a fight that he should have known was rigged. Let that be a lesson to those who think that pride is the least deadly of sins.

I can still feel the welts and bumps all over his body on my fingertips. I can hear the last proud beats of his dying heart. I can smell his blood over the residue of cheap cologne and cigar smoke left behind by his killer.

In that moment my life was changed forever.

A made a silent vow to my father that I would take my new gifts and put them to good use. I would dedicate my life to the battle for justice. Not revenge. Justice.

I would clean up The Kitchen and keep it clean. I would throw myself headlong into my studies until I was the best damn lawyer in New York, America, the world. I would stick up for people who couldn't stick up for themselves. I would give legal aid, _free_ legal aid to those that needed to see justice done the most.

Later I learned the fallibility of the legal system, the ways that innocent people can be wrongfully imprisoned while guilty men walked free to brag of their conquests in seedy bars with other low lives.

Well, I had a solution to that too.

While I studied in academia tirelessly by day, the night brought an entirely different education. I met a man, a blind man, who taught me how to use my heightened senses as weapons. I did not find him, he found me. He taught me to turn adversity into advantage and instilled me with the spirit of a warrior. His name was Stick. He's gone now.

After graduating from college I opened a trunk that had remained shut for years. It contained all my father's stuff. His lucky yellow robe, his boxing gloves, boots, under gloves, the paraphernalia of a boxer. I worked all that night and the following day constructing a costume of yellow, black and red that would help me carve out a new identity that criminals would grow to fear. This character had a name, a name born in the playgrounds of my childhood. A name the other children used to taunt me with because I made a promise to my father never to solve my problems with my fists. A name that would go from being an ironic, derogatory insult to a badge of honour.The costume has changed over the years but the name remains...

**-D**

** D- **

But let's get back to the here and now.

The here is the balcony of my brownstone and the now is 7:15 am. Every morning I like to stand here in my bathrobe and let the city talk to me. While I may lack in sight my senses of hearing and smell more than compensate, the deluge of sensory experience tapping me into the very life's blood of Hell's Kitchen.

The doughy smell of freshly baked bagels drifts up to me from Marty's Deli a block away, accompanied by the aroma of a thousand dark roasted percolations.

Toasters all over the neighbourhood pop open with a satisfying _ker-chak_, an old-fashioned tea-kettle whistles urgently, eggs hiss and spit gleefully on griddles and frying pans. The gushing, trickling rivers of freshly squeezed oranges punctuate early morning chatter. Husbands kiss wives goodbye as they set off for work, children crunch greedily through boxed of cereal, scrambling for the free toy inside. A young couple decide to devote the morning to laying in each-other's arms.

The distinct sounds and smells of the kitchen and all who live there in all mingle to form a chorus rather than a cacophony. The neighbourhood itself a tangible entity rises into my nose and ears to whisper,

"Good morning Matt"

Sure as hell beats a morning paper. It's turning out to be a beautiful day too. The early morning sun pierces the dewy mists left over from the night and lightly brushes my cheek. The promise filled smell of spring dances playfully in my nostrils.

The aroma of a thousand steaming coffee pots becomes unbearable and I'm just about to get my own caffeine fix when the harsh chime of a broken window three blocks away snaps me out of my reverie. The subsequent din of the burglar alarm literally makes me wince. I try to fade it out and concentrate on the trajectory.

Sounds like Belsen's Independent Jewellers on Bendis Avenue. A brazen act of daylight robbery.

Someone should have known better than to pull this in the Kitchen!

Scared, barked commands drift up to me.

The squeal of rubber on asphalt.

I'm wearing the entire costume except for the gloves and the mask before I know what's happening. Pulling the heavy, complexly woven fabric over my face I train my hearing on the escaping getaway car.

They're coming my way.

Good.

A cursory check of the area tells me that nobody's looking my way. I'm safe to pounce.

Leaping over the rails I savour the feeling of the wind rushing past me as I fall toward the approaching vehicle.

Look lively you scum.

Here comes… **Daredevil : The Man Without Fear**

In

_**Schism / msihcS**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Schism / msihcS**_

**-D**

** D-**

_Grudgingly his eyes open, he does not realise that the crumbling substance gluing them shut is dried blood. The world is blurry and out of focus, lurching violently as he hauls himself to his feet. The fuzzy pounding in his head feels like a hangover, though he no longer drinks. He has no idea where he is or how he got here. His surroundings are still a hazy mess of colours to him and he realises with horror that he must have left his contact lenses in overnight. He peels the dried husks of the lenses from his pupils, the pain making him wince and take in a sharp breath of air._

_Ozone scratches its way through his sinuses._

_His lungs fill with the stale meat smell of death._

_The coppery tang of blood refuses to shake free of his nostrils._

_In the background, quiet but unmistakable the smell of old wood and stone._

_His heart begins pounding as he realises with absolute lucidity that something is very wrong. He blinks repeatedly trying to muster a modicum of clarity his vision. He tilts his head upwards and his eyes register the sombre dark brown of polished mahogany, slowly drawn to the bright, colourful ball hovering in the air. He stares at it, scrutinises it and as he takes a step forward resplendent figures assemble in its luminous haze. Human forms clad in red and blue, their heads adorned with pearlescent halos present themselves to him and he realises that he is in Trinity Church in Manhattan about the time he trips over something soft but heavy._

_He lands with a thud; a hand shoots out instinctively to break his fall, coming to rest on something warm and wet._

_Fear pounces on him as he lies face down on the soft cooling object that he tripped over. It wraps itself around him like a parasitic blanket as he pushes himself into a kneeling position, laughing with grim satisfaction at his mind's frenzied speculations._

_His shaking hand hovers in front of his face and he feels more than sees the blood as it drips lazily down his fingers. He tries to scream but the sound is smothered in his throat. His stomach tightens like a fist and his insides melt into a quagmire of nauseous fear and confusion. _

_Behind him there is a sudden explosion of sound and a long streak of harsh, cold morning light slices its way into the church, racing up the alter and illuminating the cooling body that lies in front of him._

"_F…"_

_The word catches in his throat, strangling him with the heart wrenching truth that his life has been changed forever._

"_F…."_

_He tries to force it out, as if to say the word will awaken the dead man whose blood is congealing on his hands, streaked across his naked torso, caked on his eyelids._

"_Freeze!" _

_The voice and the metallic click of a loaded gun snap his head around._

_He sees the police officer racing toward him, gun trained on him._

_Then he sees the bodies. _

_Innumerable and mutilated, strewn all over the stone floor like some the most dreadful imaginings of Hieronymus Bosch._

_The floor, the pews, the walls are all daubed with their blood._

_He turns his head around to gaze at the murdered and mangled form before him._

"_Father."_

_Then everything goes black._

**-D**

** D-**

Plummeting down towards the streets of Hell's kitchen I try to penetrate the white noise of sound the wind makes as it rushes past me.

The timing has to be perfect or I'm street pizza.

I press a stud on my billy club and the grapnel shoots out, wrapping serpentine around a fire escape. I pump my legs like a kid on a swing and my arms feel like they're going to pop out of my sockets.

The car is about twenty feet away from me.

My momentum carries me in an arc and my butt almost grazes the asphalt as I come sailing back up again.

Ten feet away now.

I retract the grapnel and the line whistles back into its housing. My momentum exhausted I now enter a freefall.

Five feet.

I tuck myself into a backward somersault just in time for my feet to land squarely on the bonnet.

I am, of course, unable to see the getaway driver's face but I'm sure it must be an absolute peach!

I put my fist through the wind shield and lean in through the jagged glass, giving them my very best snarl. The pheromones in their terrified sweat drift up at me. I hear four separate heart beats thumping like they're trying to punch through their rib cages.

Never underestimate the psychological advantage of being dressed as the Devil!

Right away I know these guys are small timers who've stumbled upon a score too big for them. A real professional would slam on his breaks, or swerve to throw me off the bonnet. This driver's either too scared or stupid or both.

"You're all going to jail."

I hiss at them and the fear of incarceration seems to get them motivated. One of the two in the back I hear fumbling with his gun. His hands are shaking, he's slow and nervous and useless.

Amateur.

All I have to do is pitch the billy club as hard as I can into his face. Bone crunches satisfyingly and the club bounces off the bridge of his nose and back into my hand while he drops the gun to nurse the broken bloody mess in the middle of his face.

Through the near deafening thrum of the engine and the sheer blinding wind the sound of churning, pressurised water finds its way to my ears and gives me an idea.

Before his friends have time to react I grab the steering wheel and turn it sharply to the right. As the vehicle bounces onto the kerb I hop off of the bonnet just in time for it to plough right into a fire hydrant.

Right on cue the water geysers into the air, the sound of its tiny droplets creating a picture of the scene for me so clear it's like seeing in High Definition. Only two of them are stupid enough to get out of the car.

The guy who was sitting in the passenger seat next to the driver, he's bigger than me and heavier but his movements are hesitant, nervous, belying his cocky, broad shouldered swagger as he walks toward me.

The second, leaner man is taking cover around the other side of the bonnet, this means he's probably taken the gun from his friend whose nose I busted.

I'm so full of adrenaline right now my every muscle tingles, muscle fibres are taut like steel springs, and the world seems to crawl past in Baywatch-motion.

A strategy practically forms itself.

I run as quickly as I can towards the big guy, hoping the one with the gun isn't so much of a scumbag that he'll shoot through his friend to get to me.

I am wrong.

The loud pop of the gun is like a strobe to my radar senses, creating a white out that all I can do is run into and rely on instinct. It gives me no pleasure to hear the bullets tear into the flesh of the big man, nor smell the breath that's forced out of his lungs as he slumps into my arms. I bury my head in his chest and hear a tiny, shallow heartbeat. I say a silent prayer for my silent opponent as his friend's bullets strike the building behind me, spitting chunks of masonry in my direction.

He's panicking, firing blindly and hoping for the best. I hear the dull click of a hammer striking an empty barrel before he does and I'm on him before he can even drop the gun.

My fist collides once, twice, three, four times. Tooth and bone bite through the weave of my gloves and into my knuckles. The trouble maker inside me, the angry mischievous kid I keep buried beneath morals, philosophy and religion tells me to keep going. Through the red mist of fury the part of me that separates me from the tricksters and thugs I pray upon tells me to calm my fury.

Fortunately for the gunman, I listen to it.

I pull him close and rasp;

"May God forgive you if you've killed that man!"

When I'm confident the thug with the gun is incapacitated I return my attention to the two still in the car. I listen through the dot matrix of falling water and focus on their heartbeats and breathing. They were knocked out in the collision.

I go back to the large man whose back is perforated with bullets.

People are gathering around us now, some concerned, some overcome with morbid curiosity. Fortunately I hear one of them have the good grace to call the police and an ambulance. He doesn't mention me, and I'm grateful to him for that.

I kneel beside the big man and strain to hear his tiny heartbeat. The coppery tang of blood is almost overwhelming and suddenly I'm a kid again, hot tears burning lines down my face as I kneel over the body of my father.

He whispers to me;

"Am I going to go to Hell?"

"I hope not." I reply, really wishing I could say something more encouraging.

His heartbeat is barely a trace of a blip on my radar now and I honestly don't know if he can make it until the ambulance arrives.

"Is it too late to say I'm sorry?"

I can't see him but I know he's crying. I put my hand on his shoulder and say with absolute sincerity;

"Never."

The fire hydrant's cold rain is still falling. A baptism for a man who will be reborn and forsake the criminal path if God spares him his life.

I stay with him until the ambulance arrives.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

_The spider looks out and surveys his web. A web forged not in delicate, silver gossamer but in brick, granite, concrete, glass and steel. Hundreds of feet below him, the flies scurry, their labours nourishing him without them even know him. Sometimes he feeds upon their blood, profiting from their death. More often, though, he gluts himself upon their sweat, their toil. The very knowledge that they work, knowingly or unknowingly, for him is enough to sustain him. He looks down upon the tiny specks that litter his sidewalk and wonders idly at the trivial, banal thoughts that occupy their inferior minds._

_He wonders how much they __**really**__ know about their city._

_About him._

_He wonders if they know how much he loathes them._

_The pious and the deluded would call him a criminal. A murderer, a thief, an extortionist. Yes, he is all these things, but to brand him with such a label would be to miss the point completely. Men like him are the backbone of this city. Their essence is in the very mortar that holds up the Empire State Building. The city's cement is mixed with the blood of the bodies they have had to step over to rise to power._

_Without men like him, New York would be a feeble parody of its present, glorious self._

_He is Wilson Fisk._

_The Kingpin of Crime._

_The call comes in at 7:15 am. For eight seconds he listens, and then speaks three words._

"_Get me Hennessy." _

_He puts down the receiver and returns to his window side reverie._

_The blood of a troublesome fly will be spilled this morning. _

-**D**

**D**-

I arrive at the office a little after 7:30am.

I like to get there a good half hour before everyone else. It does me good to have some me time, get my headspace together. Shake off the pain and fatigue of the last night's super heroics.

Mostly, I like to be alone with that smell.

The musty smell of the ancient paper of the old books, the sweetish smell of old ink. The pungent aroma of the polish they use on the statue of Madame Justice.

It's the smell of the law.

It's one of the things that keep me doing what I do.

To my surprise, Tammie, the new temp, is there already. She makes me coffee and tells me all about her aspirations of pop stardom. She sings to herself in the kitchenette. She probably thinks I can't hear her through the walls, over the machine that prints my e-mails into Braille. She shouldn't quit her day job, but of course I don't tell her that.

I'm just about to go over the case file for the first client of the day when I hear a familiar, cheerful voice from reception. As the door swings open I catch the tail end of a conversation.

"- ican Idol. You just keep sending off those tapes Tammie. Huh? Oh yeah, cream, two sugars. Thanks hon, you're the greatest!"

The door swings shut and I conjure up my very wryest smile for my old friend.

"Morning, Foggy."

Franklin 'Foggy' Nelson. My best friend since Columbia University. Not only the nicest guy you could ever meet but quite possibly the finest defence lawyer walking the Earth right now. Probably better than me. Not that I'd ever say that to his face of course.

"Hey Matt. I got breakfast."

"Columbino's?"

"Hell yeah!"

There's the rustling of a paper bag and then the scents hit me. My usual steak, egg and cheese bagel. The smell of the freshly baked dough, the scent of the seared meat, the cheese melting as it begins to bubble with a pop that's barely audible even to my ears. A symphony of aroma, intoxicating me with the promise of flavours to come.

The thing's in my mouth about a nanosecond after Foggy lays it in front of me. Don't worry about the calories. With my nightly activities I burn a lot of energy. I need to eat a whole lot more than Joe Public.

In fact, here's a handy hint. If you're at the supermarket and you see a single guy buying a ridiculous amount of red meat, eggs and protein shakes. If he doesn't look like a bodybuilder, chances are he's a superhero. I hear Luke Cage has to eat nine meals a day or he'll pass out. You don't want to know how much The Thing spends on steaks.

"Good?" Foggy enquires.

I don't answer; just make a sort of porcine, grunting noise. I catch a whiff of what Foggy's having. Steak, onions, mushrooms, peppers, all smothered in Monterey Jack cheese.

"What the Hell is that, Foggy?"

"Low carb platter!"

"You're kidding."

"Nope, I've joined the legions of Americans who are running around in terror of carbohydrates."

"Oh, Foggy."

"What? Summer's just around the corner; I wanna drop a few pounds quickly. I'm doing Atkins."

"If you're that desperate to lose weight you should come out a few nights with me. I could use a sidekick."

"Tempting."

"I suppose this has nothing to do with Tammie."

"What about Tammie?"

"Did I hear you actually _compliment_ her on her singing just now?"

"She's hot!"

"She sounds terrible!"

"And the music industry today is just full of people who are talented but ugly, right Matt?"

"Shhhh. Here she comes."

Tammie breezes into the office with the mail and sincere pleasantries. Her voice shows me the smile I can't see.

She pours us coffee.

Bless her! She only spills it twice.

-**D**

**D**-

_He runs._

_Shouldering his way through baffled New Yorkers he runs. A few manage to snatch a glance at his face. When they see the pure, undiluted terror and panic etched upon that face they step aside. _

_Eyes widen._

_Babies cry._

_The blood! He forgot about the blood._

_The blood all over his clothes. It makes them sticky and hard and rub against his skin like sandpaper. He has long forgotten its fetid stink_

_Still he runs._

_He runs and he prays inwardly as his lungs burn and his heart pumps gasoline through his body where his blood should be. He is too terrified and exhausted to consider who he might be praying to. Certainly not God. He has never shown anything but utter disdain for religion. For all its constructive uses the word of God had brought nothing but misery to his life._

_Unwanted images flash through his mind, brief but potent. _

_He is eleven years old and staring down at himself in his altar boy apparel. _

_Everyone is looking at him. Some of the ladies look shocked. A few cross themselves._

_His father gazes sternly down at him._

_His father._

_Father stands over him, impossibly tall. A mountain of pious judgement, stern eyes and stony silent, impersonal beatings. Those steely grey eyes burn into him from the past ands suddenly his legs lose the will to propel him any further._

_He lands hard. His head grazes the paved sidewalk._

_Images, sounds, everything goes fuzzy for a second. He drags himself up into a sitting position, blood trickling into his eyes from the newly formed gash above his eyebrow._

_He sits and allows himself a moment to catch his breath while the busy denizens of New York brush past him. His terrified suffering is nothing more than an inconvenience to them. _

_He wipes the blood out of his eye with a shaking fist and notices a hand stretched out to him from the sea of bodies. A voice in his ears through the noise of the traffic and the incessant buzz of his headache._

"_Need a hand there, pal?"_

_Groggily he stares up at the Good Samaritan. Mid forties, clothing expensive but worn, something about his smile arouses the faintest hint of suspicion. The Samaritan is joined by another, burlier man wearing denims and a leather jacket._

"_Would you look at this guy, Hennessy?" the burly man chuckles. "Looks like he's had himself an accident."_

"_Sure has." Hennessy agrees, staring down at him. There seems to be some mocking condescension in his eyes and his voice. "You okay down there fella?" _

_Hennessy speaks as if he were addressing a slow child._

"_Havin' a bad day, huh?"_

_The hand hangs there still in front of his eyes. The man on the ground raises a hand to take Hennessy's. But he freezes as his eyes wander toward Hennessy's belt line. They fix on the unmistakable bulge of a hip holster._

_Panic claims him._

_His mind reels. _

_New sweat races to his brow to join the dried, stinking, blood streaked remnants from the mornings' exertions. Slowly, steadily he draws himself back to his feet._

"_I… I think I'm okay, thanks." His voice trembles but, considering his circumstances, he thinks he sounds fairly nonchalant._

_There's something about Hennessey's laugh that he doesn't like. Not at all._

"_Okay?" Hennessy snorts, "Did you get a load of that, Penn? _Okay_? You looked in a mirror lately buddy?"_

_There is no humour in Hennessey's wolf like smile._

"_You're pretty damned far from okay, friend."_

"_NO!" The sound comes from his throat but his mind had not created the word. Before he knows what he had doing, his foot has collided sharply with Hennessey's groin, causing an explosion of whiskey sour air to blow into his face. Hennessey staggers back. Penn, the larger man catches his strumbling accomplice and the fugitive seizes his chance to run._

_He ploughs headlong into the rush hour crowd, the shouted threats of his pursuers still audible above the noise of the traffic. He sprints with reckless abandon, turning blind corners, upsetting newsstands, throwing himself into long, dark alleys._

_It takes around seven minutes for his body to completely give up on him and send him crashing once again to the sidewalk. He gasps in huge lungfuls of air, panting on the ground, caked in dried blood and sweat like some sort of rabid wild animal._

_At least he is somewhere quieter now. Fewer passers by wrinkle their noses at him in disdain._

_Where is he?_

_His knowledge of Manhattan is far from perfect but he would place himself somewhere near Clinton. He drags himself slowly to his feet, staggering to the shade of a nearby tree. _

_He scans the area for signs of his pursuers. He sees nothing but knows that they cannot be far behind. The brass plaque on the adjacent wall twinkles in the morning sun. _

_Something about the writing on it stirs some subconscious part of his mind and before he can take stock of his actions he is walking towards it._

_Two names from the past are etched on the plaque._

_Nelson & Murdock_

_Attorneys At Law_

_Sanctuary._

_He could almost laugh, it is so fortuitous. _

_Instead he looks up at the sky and says scornfully._

"_I still don't believe in you."_


End file.
